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Iliili'|jiliil"iii|ii|{iiiiiiit(liiliilii|'>lif|:iri|  Ji'iiiiriji.r  I'tiniiiiiiiF 


TSde  Ne)i> 

RE  P UB  Lie 

A JouTnal  of  Opinion 


The  Campaign 

Against  Sweating 

By 

WALTER  LI  PPM  ANN 

a- 


CP/i^9  / S' 


Reprinted  from  the  issue  of  March  27,  1915 
for  TLe  National  Consumers’  League 
Six  East  TLirty-nintli  Street 
New  York  City 


The  Republic  Publishing  Company.  Inc..  421  West  21st  Street.  New  York,  N.Y. 


. Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 


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The  Campaign 

Against  Sweating 

By  Walter  Lippmann 

“More  than  half  the  'people  emplo'yed  in  the 
factories  and  stores  investigated  in  New  York 
City  get  less  than  $8.00  a week.” — Dr. 
Howard  Woolston,  Director  of  Investigation 
for  the  New  York  State  Factory  Commission. 

IT  is  all  very  well  to  say  of  a woman  that  “she 
is  working  for  her  living,”  but  suppose  she  is 
working  and  not  making  her  living.  What  are 
you  to  say  then?  You  can  remark  that  you  are 
indeed  very  sorry,  and  leave  the  matter  there.  Or 
you  can  say  with  more  piety  than  wisdom  that 
wages  are  determined  by  natural  laws  which  man 
must  let  alone.  Or  you  can  insist  that  she  is  being 
sweated;  that  a business  which  does  not  pay  a liv- 
ing wage  is  not  paying  its  labor  costs;  that  such 
businesses  are  humanly  insolvent,  for  in  paying  less 
than  a living  wage  they  are  guilty  of  as  bad  busi- 
ness practice  and  far  worse  moral  practice  than  if 
they  were  paying  dividends  out  of  assets. 

Everyone  knows  what  to  think  of  a get-rich- 
quick  concern  which  asks  people  to  subscribe  to 
its  capital  stock,  and  then  uses  the  money  invested 


3 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


to  pay  profits.  We  call  It  a fraud.  When  a rail- 
road goes  on  paying  dividends  without  charging 
up  deterioration,  people  speak  of  It  not  as  a fraud 
but  as  bad  business.  But  when  a mercantile  estab- 
lishment pays  its  labor  less  than  labor  can  live  on, 
it  is  combining  the  evils  of  the  mismanaged  railroad 
and  the  get-rich-quick  concern.  It  Is  showing  a 
profit  It  has  not  honorably  earned,  it  is  paying  a 
dividend  out  of  its  vital  assets,  that  is,  out  of  the 
lives,  the  health,  and  the  happiness  of  its  employees. 
A business  that  exists  on  labor  paid  less  than  a liv- 
ing wage  is  not  a business  at  all,  for  it  is  not  pay- 
ing its  fixed  charges.  They  are  being  paid  either 
by  the  family  of  the  woman  worker,  or  by  her 
friends,  or  by  private  charities,  or  by  the  girl  her- 
self in  slow  starvation. 

There  are  few  left  to  deny  the  truth  of  these 
general  ideas.  Even  the  people  who  are  fighting 
minimum  wage  legislation  have  not  attempted  to 
deny  that  a self-respecting  business  should  pay  the 
full  cost  of  Its  labor.  Nor  has  any  serious  attempt 
been  made  to  impugn  the  damning  wage  statistics 
revealed  in  one  state  after  another  and  clinched  by 
the  Factory  Investigation  Commission  in  New 
York.  We  know  now  that  thousands  of  women 
are  below  the  line  which  the  most  moderate  esti- 
mate can  call  a living  wage.  ICnowIng  this  fact,  we 
know  that  something  must  be  disastrously  wrong; 
knowing  it,  we  must  act  to  remedy  it  if  we  can, 
and  no  Intelligent  person  will  say  that  we  are  med- 
dling in  what  does  not  concern  us.  The  spec- 
tacle of  paper-box,  shirt  and  candy  manufacturers 


4 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


and  department-store  keepers  living  on  the  profits 
of  a business  that  does  not  pay  its  employees  a 
living  wage  is  so  absurd  that  we  begin  to  wonder 
what  are  the  serious  arguments  against  minimum 
wage  legislation. 

Fortunately  Mr.  Rome  G.  Brown  knows  all  the 
arguments,  serious  and  otherwise.  Mr.  Brown,  let 
it  be  said,  is  an  attorney  who  has  fought  living 
wage  legislation  in  various  states,  and  is  the  author 
of  the  brief  filed  before  the  Supreme  Court  in  the 
Oregon  case.  He  is  a kind  of  specialist  in  the  busi- 
ness of  finding  fault  with  the  minimum  wage,  and 
so  no  injustice  can  be  done  him  or  his  cause  by 
taking  up  the  points  he  raises. 

What  Mr.  Brown  Believes 

Mr.  Brown’s  latest  utterance  is  dated  February 
10,  1915,^  and  it  seems  that  Mr.  Brown  is  no 
longer  opposed  to  the  minimum  wage.  He  is  op- 
posed to  the  compulsory  minimum  wage,  but  he  is 
for  the  ethical  minimum  wage.  “Compulsion,” 
says  Mr.  Brown,  “stifles  the  humanitarian  mo- 
tive.” Above  all  things  Mr.  Brown  does  not  wish 
to  stifle  that.  He  does  not  say  that  six  dollars  a 
week  is  a good  wage.  What  he  says  is  that  any 
attempt  to  force  the  employer  to  raise  it  would 
destroy  the  finer  bloom  of  morality. 

“His  action  ceases  to  be  virtuous  or  moral  when 
once  you  have  enacted  into  a statute  the  precept  of 
the  Golden  Rule,  and  when  its  observance  is  enforced 
under  the  threat  of  fine  and  imprisonment.  Actions 
otherwise  virtuous — of  benevolence,  of  charity,  of 
I Annual  Dinner  of  National  Retail  Dry  Goods  Association. 

s 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


neighborly  love — are  deprived  of  all  elements  of 
morality  when  performed  under  compulsion.” 

And  so,  rather  than  take  away  from  the  act  of 
raising  wages  all  elements  of  morality,  Mr.  Brown 
would  leave  wages  where  they  are.  It  is  obviously 
high-minded  of  him,  and  exceedingly  far-sighted. 
For  here  we  see  a leading  attorney  fighting  step 
by  step  to  preserve  the  quintessence  of  morality 
for  employers  toward  that  hypothetical  time  when 
they  decide  of  their  own  free  will  to  raise  wages. 
At  this  historic  moment,  however,  we  are  simply 
in  the  happy  position  of  knowing  that  when  em- 
ployers abolish  the  starvation  wage  they  will  do  so 
with  unblemished  ethical  motives.  There  is  in- 
describable comfort  in  the  thought. 

Some  More  of  Mr.  Brown’s  Beliefs 

I am  a student  of  Mr.  Brown’s  writings,  and 
his  Tolstoyan  aversion  to  any  kind  of  legal  com- 
pulsion Is  not  new  to  me.  He  wrote  a book  just 
about  a year  ago  In  which  he  attacked  the  Minne- 
sota statute  of  1913,  and  pointed  out  that  the  real 
trouble  with  It  lay  In  the  fact  that  the  wage  es- 
tablished was  legal  and  compulsory.  As  a contrast 
he  recommended  the  Massachusetts  act  of  1912. 
Under  that  law  the  Minimum  Wage  Commission 
may  establish  Wages  Boards  In  particular  Indus- 
tries. On  the  findings  of  these  Boards  the  Commis- 
sion may  recommend  a certain  minimum  wage,  and 
publish  its  finding  In  the  newspapers.  There  are  no 
penalties  for  disregarding  the  recommendation,  ex- 
cept those  which  public  opinion  creates.  It  is,  in 


6 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


short,  a use  of  “moral”  force  rather  than  of  legal 
force.  It  is  this  Massachusetts  model  which  we 
in  New  York  are  trying  to  follow. 

Naturally  we  were  happy  to  think  that  Mr. 
Brown  approved  our  labors.  The  barbarous,  im- 
moral Oregonians  and  Minnesotans  who  wish  to 
force  these  reforms  by  law  had  naturally  to  be 
fought,  but  Massachusetts  and  New  York,  where 
the  elements  of  morality  are  still  strong,  would 
find  a supporter  in  Mr.  Brown. 

“The  Minimum  Wage,  by  voluntary  cooperation, 
including  that  of  the  states  through  non-compulsory 
statutes,  is  altogether,  as  it  must  be  admitted,  a log- 
ical workable  measure.”  ^ 

He  was  referring  directly  to  the  Massachusetts 
act. 

“It  adds  to  the  efforts  for  amelioration  by  purely 
individual  initiative,  and  by  privately  organized  co- 
operation, the  encouragement  and  assistance  of  inves- 
tigations and  recommendations  made  under  official 
authority.  It  naturally  results  in  bringing  in  line 
with  the  employers  of  more  humanitarian  tendencies 
those  who,  from  avarice,  neglect  or  indifference,  would 
remain  inactive  without  some  such  stimulating  in- 
centive.” 

So  well  pleased  was  Mr.  Brown  with  these  sen- 
timents that  he  embodied  them  verbatim  in  the 
brief  which  he  presented  to  the  Supreme  Court. 
Remember  that  this  is  the  attorney  who  is  engaged 
in  attacking  the  Oregon  minimum  wage  law,  and 
think  then  what  it  means  to  have  him  hold  up  the 
Massachusetts  act,  and  by  implication  the  New 

I “The  Minimum  Wage,”  by  Rome  G.  Brown,  February  2,  1914. 

7 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING  - 


York  one,  as  a model  of  righteousness.  He  says 
all  that  anyone  would  claim  for  the  proposed 
statute  in  New  York,  and  if  Mr.  Brown  hadn’t 
made  a speech  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  Na- 
tional Retail  Dry  Goods  Asspciation  on  February 
lo,  1915,  we  should  all  have  supposed  that  the 
chief  opponent  of  the  legal  minimum  wage  law  was 
an  ardent  supporter  of  the  voluntary  measure  as 
applied  in  Massachusetts  and  proposed  in  New 
York. 

But  a few  months  have  done  much  to  Mr. 
Brown’s  spirit.  His  hatred  of  compulsion,  his  love 
of  free  morality,  have  deepened.  Like  Emma 
Goldman,  he  has  come  to  fear  not  only  the  tyr- 
anny of  law  but  the  tyranny  of  public  opinion. 
The  Massachusetts  statute  he  says  now  is  “most  ob- 
noxiously compulsory.”  In  that  barbarous  state, 
“when  the  wage  is  promulgated  by  the  Commis- 
sion, although  there  is  no  fine  or  imprisonment  for 
the  employer,  if  he  fails  to  comply  he  is  published 
through  the  state  as  an  unreasonable  recalcitrant.” 
Mr.  Brown  only  a few  months  ago  described  such 
laggard  employers  as  men  who  from  “avarice, 
neglect,  or  indifference  would  remain  inactive  with- 
out some  such  stimulating  incentive.”  Now  that 
New  York  is  threatening  to  follow  Massachusetts, 
Mr.  Brown  weeps  publicly  at  the  horror  of  com- 
pulsion from  public  opinion  upon  the  avaricious, 
the  negligent,  and  the  indifferent.  “Indeed  the 
statute  makes  it  a crime  for  any  newspaper  pub- 
lisher to  refuse  this  publicity  to  blacklist  one  who” 
— I thought  Mr.  Brown  would  say  “who  is  ava- 


8 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


ricious,  neglectful,  or  indifferent”;  what  he  said 
was,  “one  who  may  be  his  own  relative  or  his  best 
paying  advertiser — or  even  himself.”^  It  seemed 
to  me  then  that  he  was  becoming  a bit  finnicky  in 
his  objection  to  even  the  subtler  forms  of  compul- 
sion. Yet  we  dare  not  ignore  Mr.  Brown.  He 
is  the  heavy  artillery  on  the  other  side.  So,  leav- 
ing aside  his  contributions  to  morals  as  not  alto- 
gether inspiring,  we  must  proceed  to  consider  him 
as  an  economist. 


“ Wage-Worth  ” 

“You  cannot  legislate  efficiency,”  says  Mr. 
Brown.  “When  you  compel  an  employer  to  pay 
a wage  which  is  fixed  regardless  of  the  worker’s 
efficiency,  you  are  legislating  a forced  gratuity  to 
the  worker,  no  matter  that  the  wage  be  measured 
by  the  cost  of  living  or  by  any  other  standard 
which  disregards  its  fair  worth.”  There  you  have 
in  compact  form  the  objection  to  a legal  minimum 
wage  which  is  most  persistent  in  people’s  minds. 
They  say  to  themselves,  “How  can  you  force  an 
employer  to  pay  a girl  more  than  she  is  worth?” 
Isn’t  that  against  all  business,  common  sense  and 
the  laws  of  economics?  What  right  has  the  state 
to  legislate  charity  into  the  pay  envelope?  Isn’t 
it  absolutely  wrong  to  force  any  woman  to  receive 
more  wages  than  she  earns? 

The  answer  is  that  it  might  be  wrong  if  there 
were  any  way  of  telling  how  much  she  is  worth, 
or  what  she  earns.  We  know  what  women  work- 
ers receive,  but  no  one  has  the  least  idea  whether 

I Speech  at  Annual  Dinner  of  National  Retail  Dry  Goods  Association. 

9 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


their  income  has  anything  to  do  with  their  produc- 
tivity or  their  efficiency.  If  there  is  one  thing  the 
Factory  Investigating  Commission  made  clear,  it  is 
that  wages  for  unskilled  women’s  work  in  the 
sweated  trades  are  not  based  upon  any  recog- 
nizable standard  of  efficiency  or  value. 

Dr.  Howard  Woolston,  who  directed  the  work 
of  the  New  York  State  Factory  Investigating  Com- 
mission, has  pointed  this  out:^ 

“Even  for  identical  work  in  the  same  locality, 
striking  differences  in  pay  are  found.  In  one  whole- 
sale candy  factory  in  Manhattan  no  male  laborer  and 
no  female  hand-dipper  is  paid  as  much  as  $8  a week, 
nor  does  any  female  packer  receive  as  much  as  $5.50. 

In  another  establishment  of  the  same  class  in  the  same 
borough  every  male  laborer  gets  $8  or  over,  and  more 
than  half  the  female  dippers  and  packers  exceed  the 
rates  given  in  the  former  plant.  Again,  one  large 
department  store  in  Manhattan  pays  86  per  cent  of 
its  saleswomen  $10  or  over;  another  pays  86  per  cent 
of  them  less.  When  a representative  paper-box  manu- 
facturer learned  that  cutters  in  neighboring  factories 
receive  as  little  as  $10  a week,  he  expressed  surprise, 
because  he  always  pays  $15  or  more.  This  indicates 
that  there  is  no  well  established  standard  of  wages  in 
certain  trades.  The  amounts  are  fixed  by  individual 
bargain,  and  labor  is  ‘worth’  as  much  as  the  employer 
agrees  to  pay.’’ 

These  figures  show  pretty  clearly  that  two  em- 
ployees in  the  same  district  making  the  same  kind 
of  goods  have  no  way  of  standardizing  wages  on 
any  basis  of  value.  That  is  why  Mr.  Brown,  talk- 
ing about  wages  depending  upon  “wage-worth,”  is 
using  a catchy  phrase  and  a neat  theory  which  in 
I The  Survey,  February  6,  1915. 

10 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


practice  mean  literally  nothing  at  all.  The  kind  of 
women’s  work  to  which  the  minimum  wage  would 
apply  has  no  standard  by  which  wages  are  fixed. 
Women  get  what  they  get,  by  the  custom  of  the 
shop,  by  the  whim  of  the  superintendent,  by  arbi- 
trary decision.  No  law  of  supply  and  demand,  no 
sense  of  “wage-worth,”  determines  that  a “strip- 
per” in  order  to  earn  fifteen  cents  an  hour  must 
paste  paper  on  the  side  of  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  boxes,  and  a “hand-dipper”  must  coat  about 
seven  hundred  and  twenty  pieces  of  cream  candy 
with  chocolate,  while  a hand-ironer  in  the  laundry 
will  earn  twenty-five  cents  by  pressing  four  plain 
shirts. 

Economic  Bogeys 

With  these  facts  before  us,  suppose  that  we 
raised  the  wages  of  hand-dippers  in  candy  manu- 
facturing from  fifteen  to  seventeen  cents  an  hour, 
and  thereby  saved  the  girls  from  the  most  extreme 
hardships  of  poverty.  By  what  standard  would 
the  Mr.  Browns  be  able  to  say  that  we  were  pay- 
ing this  girl  more  than  she  is  worth,  that  the  ex- 
tra cents  were  a “forced  gratuity,”  or  that  we  were 
interfering  with  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand? 

For  what  in  the  name  of  sanity  are  these  eco- 
nomic laws  as  they  appear  in  practical  life?  Mr. 
Brown  and  others  talk  about  the  value  of  coopera- 
tion, and  how  fine  it  is  for  employers  to  raise 
wages  voluntarily.  Yes,  but  why  is  it  fine?  Isn’t 
it  disastrous  to  tamper  with  the  economic  law,  or 
are  we  to  understand  that  the  economic  law  has 


II 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


no  terrors  when  violated  by  the  good  will  of  the 
employer?  Or  perhaps  may  we  assume  that  eco- 
nomic law,  as  Mr.  Brown  uses  the  phrase,  is  noth- 
ing but  the  will  of  the  employer? 

I am  forced  to  believe  it.  I am  forced  to  con- 
clude from  much  study  of  Mr.  Brown  that  what- 
ever happens  to  exist  is  “natural”  and  “according 
to  law,”  that  any  change  inaugurated  by  the  work- 
ers or  by  public  opinion  is  “artificial,”  but  that  any 
change  created  by  employers  is  merely  economic 
law  working  itself  out  to  beneficent  ends. 

The  phrase  “economic  law”  on  the  lips  of  men 
like  Mr.  Brown  is  nothing  more  than  sheer  bun- 
combe which  conceals  a prejudice.  It  belongs  to 
the  same  grade  of  intelligence  which  says,  “You 
cannot  make  water  run  up  hill,”  in  the  face  of  the 
fact  that  you  can  make  it  run  up  to  the  top  of  the 
highest  skyscraper;  which  says,  “You  musn’t  in- 
terfere with  nature,”  and  then  proceeds  to  join 
oceans  at  Panama,  deflect  rivers,  create  lakes,  move 
mountains,  clear  jungles,  abolish  typhoid,  fly  in  the 
air,  swim  under  the  water,  tunnel  the  earth.  It  is 
pathetic  to  think  of  what  Mr.  Brown’s  plight 
would  be  if  millions  of  people  hadn’t  spent  their 
lives  “interfering  with  nature.”  They  have  put 
clothes  on  his  back,  carried  him  in  trains,  protected 
him  by  fire  laws,  surrounded  him  with  policemen; 
he  has  been  shaved,  washed,  manicured;  he  has 
gone  to  the  dentist’s.  He  owes  all  that  he  is  to 
invention,  education,  organization.  The  very  lib- 
erty he  talks  about  is  a product  of  human  effort, 
an  effort  to  impose  rational  purposes  upon  the  blind 


12 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


drift  of  things.  When  Mr.  Brown  is  prepared  to 
abolish  all  tariffs,  all  production  of  property,  all 
factory  laws,  all  laws  against  fraud,  when  he  is 
ready  to  leave  everything  to  whim  and  chance  and 
accident,  there  will  be  some  consistency  in  his 
thought. 

The  Incompetent  Employer 
In  the  meantime  he  is  wasting  fine  words.  What 
he  calls  natural  law  is  really  an  amazing  and 
damnable  inefficiency  on  the  part  of  employers. 
In  these  trades  where  women  are  employed  and 
sweated  we  are  dealing  not  with  inexorable  laws 
but  with  thoughtless,  stupid,  careless,  uneducated 
employers.  Strangely  enough,  they  are  only  too 
ready  to  describe  the  inefficiency  of  the  girls  they 
employ.  Of  course  the  girls  are  inefficient.  What 
else  can  one  expect  from  the  present  housing, 
schooling,  and^working  conditions  open  to  them? 
But  for  every  score  against  the  incompetence  of 
the  workers  there  is  at  least  one  score  against  the 
incompetence  of  the  management,  and  it  is  time 
the  general  public  realized  that  these  manufac- 
turers and  retailers  who  will  be  affected  by  the 
minimum  wage  are  proved  by  the  facts  to  be  pro- 
foundly incompetent  business  men.  When  they  cry 
out  against  “interferences,”  those  who  know  the 
facts  laugh.  Those  employers  who  wish  to  be  re- 
garded as  self-respecting  captains  of  industry 
literally  do  not  know  how  to  run  their  own  busi- 
ness, and  far  from  the  state’s  interfering  with 
them  by  investigation,  interference  is  more  likely 
to  prove  their  salvation. 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 

The  New  York  Commissioners  unearthed  the 
most  ludicrous  inefficiency.^  They  found  employ- 
ers who  kept  their  pay-rolls  in  pocket-memorandum 
books ; employers  who  had  no  knowledge  of  rates 
paid  by  competitors  for  similar  labor;  employers 
whose  rates  varied  as  much  as  fifty  per  cent  in  the 
same  neighborhood;  whose  labor  cost  varied  as 
much  as  from  seventeen  per  cent  to  thirty-nine  per 
cent  in  the  same  line  of  work.  They  found  seasonal 
fluctuations  which  were  violent.  They  found  that 
in  eleven  large  retail  stores  in  New  York  City  44,- 

000  new  names  were  added  during  the  year  and 
42,000  names  were  dropped.  This  was  to  main- 
tain an  average  working  force  of  27,000.  In  box 
and  candy  factories  nineteen  plants  employed  3,400 
persons  to  maintain  a force  of  1,700.  The  time 
lost  between  jobs  is  large.  Of  1,500  women  inter- 
viewed, 1,000  had  lost  an  average  of  one  month  in 
the  preceding  year.  Obviously  the  labor  market  in 
sweated  industries  is  not  a model  of  intelligence 
and  foresight. 

Terrible  Conclusions 

If  this  welter  of  inefficiency  is  the  product  of 
“natural  law,”  every  civilized  person  will  cry  out 
for  the  interference  of  human  law.  It  is  “natural,” 
no  doubt,  to  slop  along  in  the  archaic  manner,  pro- 
ducing money  profits  at  an  enormous  vital  deficit. 
By  the  same  token  garbage  would  accumulate  in 
backyards  and  alleys,  and  all  manner  of  disease- 
breeding foulness  litter  the  earth.  It  would  be 
“natural”  to  leave  it  there,  it  is  artificial  to  re- 
move it. 

1 These  figures  are  furnished  by  Dr.  Woolston. 

14 


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But  two  terrible  results  are  prophesied:  i,  the 

minimum  wage  will  drive  men  out  of  business;  2, 
it  will  raise  prices.  Mr.  Brown  uses  both  threats, 
though  it  is  a little  difficult  to  see  how  a business 
which  had  been  extinguished  could  raise  its  prices. 
The  idea  is,  I believe,  that  some  firms  will  go  to 
the  wall,  and  that  the  remaining  ones  will  recoup 
by  raising  prices.  These  fears  are,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  based  on  theoretical  guesses,  rather  than 
actual  probabilities.  For  the  moment  I wish  to 
consider  a third  possibility  based  on  the  experience 
of  the  brush  industry  in  Massachusetts.  Brush 
making,  it  should  be  said,  is  the  first  industry  in 
the  country  in  which  the  minimum  wage  has  been 
fixed  by  a wage  board.  Let  me  tell  the  incident 
in  Mr.  Rome  G.  Brown’s  own  words : 

“One  brush  concern,  since  the  minimum  wage  for 
brush  makers  took  effect,  has  discharged  over  one  hun- 
dred of  its  unskilled  employees  and  has  reorganized 
its  methods  of  work  so  that  its  less  skilled  labor  is 
done  by  those  who  also  perform  more  skilled  work; 
and  at  a total  wage  which  is  $40,000  a year  less  than 
that  paid  formerly.” 

In  other  words,  the  effect  of  the  minimum  wage 
has  been  to  raise  wages,  eliminate  a hundred  of  the 
most  unskilled,  and  increase  efficiency  so  much  that 
the  cost  of  labor  is  $40,000  less  than  it  was.  One 
would  think  Mr.  Brown  might  be  led  to  confess 
that  this  particular  firm  of  brush  makers  had  been 
a pretty  inefficient  organization.  Not  Mr.  Brown. 
He  is  not  in  the  business  of  admitting  inefficiency 
among  employers.  This  firm  of  brush  makers,  he 


IS 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


tells  us,  was  not  uneconomical;  it  was  unselfish. 
And  when  the  state  brought  its  brutal  hand  down 
upon  these  sensitive  brush  makers  the  finer  moral 
qualities  disappeared : 

“In  self-defense  against  the  arbitrary  interference  of 
^ the  state  with  its  business,  it  is  now  forced  to  figure 
' its  wage  scales  on  a selfish  basis.  ...” 

The  result  is  that  it  pays  a higher  wage  and 
saves  $40,000  a year.  But  what  some  people  may 
wish  to  know  is  whether  this  particular  firm,  in  the 
old  days  when  it  was  on  its  unselfish  and  inefficient 
basis,  was  applying  those  natural  laws  of  economics 
about  which  Mr.  Brown  so  graciously  instructed 
the  Supreme  Court. 

Facts  Against  Forebodings 

Let  us  assume  that  the  Minimum  Wage  act  is 
passed  in  New  York.  The  Commission  is  created, 
and  it  proceeds  to  establish  wages  boards  in  four 
industries — paper  boxes,  candy,  millinery,  and  re- 
tail dry  goods.  These  boards,  after  investigating 
the  cost  of  living  and  the  existing  wage  scales, 
order  a general  raise  of  wages  from  a median  of 
six  dollars  to  eight  dollars.  Let  us  assume  that 
these  industries  are  not  able  to  improve  their  ef- 
ficiency, are  not  able  to  do  what  the  firm  of 
Massachusetts  brush  makers  did.  Let  us  assume 
that  higher  wages  will  mean  no  increased  pro- 
ductivity among  the  women  workers.  Under  these 
circumstances,  what  would  the  minimum  wage  cost 
the  manufacturer  in  cutting  down  his  profits,  or 
the  consumer  in  raising  prices  ? 


16 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


Suppose  that  the  whole  cost  is  borne  by  the  con- 
sumer. Then  if  work-shirts  cost  three  dollars  a 
dozen,  and  the  labor  of  sewing  them  is  paid  sixty 
cents,  when  we  raise  wages  ten  per  cent,  the  labor 
cost  becomes  sixty-six  cents.  The  price  instead  of 
being  three  dollars  becomes  three  dollars  and  six 
cents.  In  other  words,  while  the  worker  receives  a 
ten  per  cent  increase,  the  consumer  pays  only  a two 
per  cent  increase. 

It  is  estimated  that  to  raise  the  wages  of  2,000 
young  women  in  New  York  candy  factories 
from  live  dollars  and  seventy-five  cents  to  eight 
dollars,  confectioners  in  order  to  cover  the  cost 
would  have  to  charge  eighteen  cents  more  per 
hundred  pounds  of  candy.  The  profits  in  depart- 
ment stores  average  over  five  per  cent  on  a year’s 
business.  But  as  the  stock  is  turned  five  or  six 
times  annually,  the  yield  on  the  investment  is 
twenty-five  per  cent  to  thirty  per  cent.  By  raising 
the  wages  of  girls  under  eighteen  to  six  dollars, 
and  of  women  over  eighteen  to  nine  dollars,  the 
cost  might  be  increased  one  and  one-quarter  per 
cent.  If  this  were  taken  from  profits  instead  of 
being  added  to  the  price,  it  would  reduce  the  return 
to  about  nineteen  per  cent.  The  reason  why  these 
figures  are  so  low  Is  that  the  whole  cost  of  labor  in 
these  sweated  Industries  is  a small  fraction  of  the 
manufacturing  cost.  In  the  case  of  paper  boxes, 
labor  Is  a charge  of  from  seventeen  per  cent  to 
thirty  per  cent  of  the  market  price ; In  candy  manu- 
facture, the  average  labor  cost  is  about  thirteen 
per  cent  of  the  manufacturing  expenses.  By  rais- 


17 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 
ing  that  charge  we  raise  the  total  cost  very  little. 

Hurting  Business 

In  the  face  of  all  this,  what  becomes  of  the  cry 
that  we  are  proposing  to  ruin  business?  It  takes 
its  place,  doesn’t  it,  beside  all  the  other  exclama- 
tions which  have  accompanied  factory  laws  since 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century?  It  is  the 
cry  which  has  accompanied  every  effort  to  clean  up 
working  conditions,  protect  mines,  guard  the  life  of 
child  and  women  workers.  Employers  are  always 
threatening  a migration  to  less  civilized  countries. 
Yet  somehow  they  stay  where  they  are.  A few 
go.  In  Victoria,  one  manufacturer  in  a panic  moved 
out  before  the  law  went  into  effect.  He  moved 
over  to  Tasmania.  Then  Tasmania  adopted  the 
same  law.  In  Victoria  when  the  law  was  first 
passed  in  1896  there  were  3,370  factories  em- 
ploying 40,814  people;  after  fifteen  years’  expe- 
rience of  the  law  there  were  5,638  factories  em- 
ploying 88,694  people. 

But  suppose  a few  employers  do  move  out  of  the 
state — say  from  New  York  to  New  Jersey.  How 
long  will  New  Jersey  tolerate  their  production  of 
pauperism,  disease  and  degradation,  and  its  costs 
in  charities,  hospitals  and  sanatoria?  Just  about 
as  long  as  it  takes  New  Jersey  to  realize  the  ridi- 
culous social  cost  of  sweating. 

Yet  we  are  told  that  some  employers  will  go  to 
the  wall.  Able  neither  to  raise  prices  nor  increase 
efficiency,  they  will  fail.  To  them  the  community 
must  reply  with  simple  kindliness  that  they  belong 


18 


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with  the  landlords  who  own  firetraps  and  conduct 
nests  of  disease  and  crime.  They  would  better  go 
out  of  business,  and  make  way  for  better  men. 

Pitying  the  Worker 

It  is  often  claimed  that  the  minimum  wage  will 
become  the  maximum.  President  Wilson  during 
his  campaign  gave  an  impetus  to  this  argument  by 
saying : 

“If  a minimum  wage  were  established  by  law,  the 
great  majority  of  employers  would  take  occasion  to 
bring  their  wage  scale  as  near  as  might  be  down  to 
the  level  of  the  minimum;  and  it  would  be  very  awk- 
ward for  the  workingmen  to  resist  that  process  suc- 
cessfully, because  it  would  be  dangerous  to  strike 
against  the  authority  of  the  federal  government.” 

Of  course  there  is  at  the  moment  no  question  of 
a federal  law.  We  are  discussing  state  laws,  and 
as  regards  New  York  a law  which  is  to  have  no 
legal  compulsion  behind  it.  We  are  proposing  to 
have  a state  commission  of  three  persons  select  a 
small  number  of  sweated  industries  where  women 
and  children  are  employed,  and  establish  for  those 
industries  wages  boards  consisting  of  six  represen- 
tatives of  the  employer,  six  of  the  workmen,  and 
two  or  three  of  the  outside  public.  This  confer- 
ence of  the  trade  is  to  study  conditions  and  recom- 
mend a minimum  wage,  which  is  then  to  be  pub- 
lished as  an  official  recommendation.  No  one  is 
legally  bound  by  it.  But  even  supposing  he  were, 
as  in  Oregon,  California  and  elsewhere,  how  can 
the  legal  fixing  of  the  least  that  may  be  paid  af- 


19 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


feet  the  discussion  of  how  much  more  shall  be  paid? 
If  we  make  a rule  that  no  one  shall  receive  less 
than  eight  dollars  a week,  how  does  that  prevent 
an  employer  from  offering,  or  the  workers  from 
asking,  nine  or  ten  dollars?  It  is  like  assuming 
that  because  the  tenement  house  law  prescribes 
one  hundred  cubic  feet  of  air  per  person,  no  one 
must  live  in  more  than  one  hundred  feet. 

But,  say  our  critics,  the  tendency  will  be  to  level 
down  to  the  minimum.  Yes,  but  whom  will  it  level 
down?  Half  the  unskilled  women  workers  will  be 
levelled  up.  What  ground  is  there  for  supposing 
the  others  will  be  levelled  down  ? Are  they,  in  the 
language  of  Mr.  Brown,  being  paid  more  than  they 
are  “worth”?  Or  are  they  being  paid  what  they 
are  “worth”  ? Or  aren’t  they  being  paid  what  the 
employer  feels  called  upon  to  pay  them?  How 
will  their  status  be  changed  by  increasing  the  pay 
of  the  sweated  workers? 

Moreover,  it  is  difficult  to  contemplate  the  folly 
of  an  employer  who  paid  all  his  help,  skilled,  un- 
skilled, experienced,  and  novice,  anything  like  a sin- 
gle minimum  standard.  With  no  incentive  left 
for  improvement,  no  reward  for  skill,  the  efficiency 
of  his  plant  would  be  a spectacle,  and  he  would  find 
very  soon  that  he  had  been  cutting  off  his  nose  to 
spite  his  face. 

There  is,  however,  no  need  to  guess  about  these 
dark  predictions.  The  minimum  wage  in  one  form 
or  another  has  been  applied  for  many  years  in  va- 
rious parts  of  the  world.  In  Victoria  it  has  been 
enforced  by  law  since  1896,  it  has  been  applied  in 


20 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


New  Zealand,  in  England  and  elsewhere.  In  the 
United  States  the  trade  unions  have  in  various 
trades  applied  it.  For  clearly  there  is  no  economic 
difference  between  a minimum  established  by  force 
of  law,  by  force  of  public  opinion,  or  by  force  of  a 
strike.  The  economic  effect  is  the  same,  and  all 
the  terrible  results  prophesied  ought  to  have  shown 
themselves.  It  is,  I believe,  an  almost  unanimous 
conclusion  of  students  that  the  minimum  rates  have 
not  tended  to  become  the  maximum. 

For  example,  according  to  Mr.  Harris  Wein- 
stock  of  the  United  States  Commission  on  Indus- 
trial Relations,  2,458  workers  in  the  city  of  Auck- 
land, New  Zealand,  had  their  wages  fixed  by  law.^ 
Among  these  948  received  the  minimum,  and  1,510, 
or  sixty-one  per  cent,  received  more.  In  Christ- 
church, New  Zealand,  out  of  2,788  under  the  wage 
law  fifty-nine  per  cent  received  more  than  the  min- 
imum. In  Dunedin,  fifty-one  per  cent  received 
above  the  legal  minimum.  To  those,  then,  who  as- 
sert that  the  effect  is  to  level  down  wages,  we  can 
oppose  the  answer  that  where  tried  it  has  done  no 
such  thing. 

Mr,  M.  B.  Hammond,  vice-chairman  of  the  In- 
dustrial Commission  of  Ohio,  from  whom  I quote 
these  figures,  says  quite  pertinently: 

“Furthermore,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  em- 
ployers’ claim  that  such  a system  of  wage  regulation 
would  have  a levelling  effect  on  wages  is  beside  the 
mark,  since  at  the  present  time  in  most  industrial  es- 
tablishments of  any  considerable  size  in  this  country, 
great  numbers  of  employees  performing  the  same  class 

I The  Survey,  February  6,  1915.  Article  by  M.  B.  Hammond 
vice-chairman  Industrial  Commission  of  Ohio. 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


of  work  are  paid  the  same  wages,  irrespective  of  dif- 
ferences in  individual  efficiency.  A few  years  ago 
when  I visited  certain  large  steel  mills  in  Pittsburgh 
I was  told  that  in  one  of  them  where  12,000  work- 
ers were  employed,  two-thirds  received  a flat  rate  of 
$1.50  a day,  and  in  another  mill  employing  4,500 
men,  two-thirds  of  the  employees  received  $1.65  a 
day.” 

Indeed,  our  campaign  against  sweating  is  badly 
named  a minimum  wage  campaign.  The  minimum 
wage  exists,  but  it  is  so  low  and  so  irregular  that 
it  has  become  an  infinitesimal  wage.  What  we  are 
struggling  for  is  a minimum  that  shall  be  a living 
wage,  a minimum  which  is  yet  so  low  that  in  all  con- 
science it  is  little  above  the  slave-owners’  standard, 
a minimum  which  shall  enable  a woman  who  works 
all  day  long  to  earn  enough  to  sustain  her  health, 
buy  decent  food,  clothes  and  lodging,  and  secure 
a little  recreation. 

The  Fringe 

There  is  one  prediction  persistently  made  by 
Mr.  Brown  and  others  which  experience  shows  to 
be  true.  A certain  number  of  the  ultimately  inef- 
ficient workers  are  displaced  when  the  living  wage 
standard  is  applied  to  an  industry.  The  brush  fac- 
tory in  Massachusetts  which  reorganized,  saved 
$40,000  on  its  wage  bill,  and  discharged  a hundred 
of  its  least  skilled  employees,  is  a case  in  point. 
There  are  undoubtedly  people  working  to-day  whom 
no  business  man  would  keep  if  they  could  not  be 
sweated.  Child  labor  is  the  most  striking  example, 
coolie  labor  is  another ; some  immigrant  labor,  both 


22 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


men’s  and  women’s,  falls  within  the  category. 
There  are  also  groups  of  workers  who  are  physical- 
ly or  mentally  defective,  and  there  are  those  who 
have  not  yet  learned  the  trade  and  so  require  an 
apprenticeship  of  some  kind. 

We  are  asked  what  is  to  become  of  these  peo- 
ple ? The  question  generally  assumes  that  we  have 
forgotten  all  about  them,  or  that  in  our  ruthless 
benevolence  we  plan  to  throw  them  out  into  the 
street.  Yet  as  a matter  of  fact  it  is  just  these  mar- 
ginal workers  who  constitute  the  most  convincing 
argument  for  establishing  living  wage  standards. 
But  they  cannot  be  dealt  with  wholesale. 

Apprentices 

In  low-skilled  occupations  such  as  the  sweated 
trades,  no  long  period  of  apprenticeship  is  required. 
But  there  is  a time  when  the  young  girl  is  so  in- 
experienced that  she  wastes  material  and  produces 
very  little  result.  All  sensible  minimum  wage 
laws  provide  for  about  six  months’  probation  at 
something  under  the  standard  wage.  There  has 
been  a tendency  among  employers  to  abuse  this 
privilege.  They  have  found  it  cheaper  to  take  on 
“apprentices”  for  six  months,  discharge  them,  and 
recruit  a new  force  of  “inexperienced  workers.” 
They  have  generally  worked  this  evasion  of  the 
spirit  of  the  plan  when  the  difference  between  the 
regular  wage  and  the  probationary  wage  was 
greater  than  the  difference  between  the  value  of 
an  inexperienced  and  an  experienced  employee. 

Obviously  these  difficulties  can  be  met  by  re- 


23 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


sourceful  administration.  An  alert  Commission 
can  adjust  its  findings  so  as  to  eliminate  gross  cir- 
cumvention, and  still  make  perfectly  feasible  a 
term  of  apprenticeship.  The  deeper  remedy  for 
the  situation  lies  in  the  school  system  which  turns 
into  industry  workers  with  so  little  general  training 
and  vocational  adaptability. 

Exceptional  Gases 

The  plan  we  propose  carries  with  it  a provision 
for  licenses  to  be  granted  by  the  Commission  in 
special  cases  where  the  evidence  is  clear  that  a 
person  should  be  permitted  to  work  for  less  than 
the  minimum  wage.  This  elasticity  is  needed  for 
good  administration,  because  in  any  human  prob- 
lem there  are  particular  people  who  fit  badly  into 
a general  rule.  There  are,  for  example,  a number 
of  workers  who  are  crippled  in  one  way  or  an- 
other, and  yet  manage  to  live  self-respecting  lives 
by  earning  small  sums.  No  one  proposes  to  crush 
them  under  an  iron  rule,  and  so  a human  discretion 
is  allowed  to  the  Commission. 

Defectives  and  Incompetents 

There  are  nevertheless  classes  of  workers  whose 
productivity  is  very,  very  low.  They  may  be  old, 
or  weak-minded,  or  physically  feeble,  or  so  utter- 
ly untrained  and  illiterate  that  under  American 
conditions  they  cannot  be  employed  at  a living 
wage.  We  say  of  them  that  they  should  not  be 
employed.  They  should  not  be  permitted  to  de- 
bauch the  labor  market,  to  wreck  by  their  competi- 
tion the  standards  of  other  workers. 


24 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


At  this  point  we  break  radically  with  our  critics. 
We  are  against  sweating.  That  means  we  are 
against  cheap  labor  and  for  the  economy  of  high 
wages.  We  say  that  it  is  saner  and  in  the  end  less 
costly  to  take  care  of  these  industrial  incompe- 
tents than  to  allow  them  to  compete  with  the  great 
mass  of  the  workers. 

The  sick  and  mentally  defective  should  be  cared 
for  by  the  state.  The  old  should  be  pensioned. 
The  children  should  be  kept  in  school,  and  subsi- 
dized to  stay  there  if  necessary.  None  of  these 
people  belong  in  the  labor  market,  and  the  mini- 
mum wage  if  it  keeps  them  out  will  do  a most 
useful  service. 


Immigration 

Not  enough  has  been  made  of  the  fact  that  the 
fixing  of  an  American  minimum  is  one  of  our  best 
protections  against  indiscriminate  and  overstim- 
ulated immigration.  Once  abolish  sweating  and 
take  industry  off  a basis  of  cheap  labor,  and  you 
have  reduced  one  of  the  great  incentives  to  the 
most  threatening  forms  of  immigration.  If  the 
European  is  compelled  to  work  at  not  less  than  an 
American  standard,  he  will  be  less  useful  to  the 
employers  of  cheap  labor,  and  less  effort  will  be 
made  to  bring  him  over. 

Child  Labor 

The  same  reasoning  applies  to  the  employment 
of  children.  They  are  hired  to-day  because  they 
are  cheap.  Make  them  expensive,  and  fewer  of 


25 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


them  will  be  hired;  there  will  thus  be  less  opposi- 
tion to  child  labor  laws.  Indeed,  by  the  transition 
from  a sweated  to  a living  standard  there  are  few 
problems  of  industry  which  are  not  affected. 
Whenever  business  men  abandon  the  old  notion  of 
all  the  traffic  will  bear  and  all  the  human  body  can 
stand,  and  turn  to  an  intelligent  counting  of  vital 
costs,  a better  morale  appears  in  the  industrial 
world. 

The  Organization  of  Chaos 

We  are  dealing  in  these  sweated  trades  with  In- 
dustries w'here  cooperation,  pride  of  work,  techni- 
cal and  social  standards  are  most  primitive.  Com- 
petition has  corrupted  them  to  the  point  of  de- 
spair, and  only  by  the  establishment  of  some  device 
like  the  wages  board  can  we  hope  to  create  a civil- 
ized discipline.  The  employers  must  organize  to 
send  their  representatives;  the  workers  must  com- 
bine to  send  theirs.  At  these  board  meetings  the 
conditions  of  the  trade  as  a whole  have  to  be  an- 
alyzed, statistics  have  to  be  compiled,  investiga- 
tions made.  Well-managed  plants  are  compared 
with  befuddled  ones;  the  whole  philosophy  of 
management  is  opened  to  discussion.  The  educa- 
tional effect  of  this  will  undoubtedly  prove  to  be 
very  great. 

For  what  the  minimum  wage  plan  proposes  is 
really  a kind  of  legislature  of  the  Industry — a leg- 
islature in  which  workers,  employers  and  public 
are  represented.  This  is  the  Wages  Board.  Its 
findings  are  subject  to  veto  or  review  by  the  Com- 


26 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


mission,  or  by  the  courts.  But  when  the  disagree- 
ment is  not  too  radical,  the  Wages  Board  becomes 
in  practice  the  actual  parliament  of  the  industry. 
Under  the  Oregon  plan  its  decrees  are  enforced 
by  the  state,  under  the  Massachusetts  plan  by  pub- 
lic opinion. 

Its  powers,  like  that  of  any  legislature,  are  lim- 
ited. It  establishes  only  the  minimum  wage.  But 
this  must  carry  with  it  agreement  about  hours,  piece 
work,  labor  conditions,  manufacturing  methods, 
use  of  machinery,  and,  in  the  end,  profits  and  prices 
too.  In  short,  the  Wages  Board  is  a device  for 
stimulating  in  sweated  and  primitive  trades  those 
beginnings  of  economic  democracy  which  the 
unions  are  beginning  to  construct  in  the  more  ma- 
ture industries.  Ultimately  this  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  promise  of  the  experiment.  The  manage- 
ment of  these  chaotic  trades  will  be  scrutinized  by 
the  persons  most  closely  concerned — the  people 
who  live  and  work  in  them.  Employers  will  begin 
to  know  what  they  are  at,  how  their  methods  com- 
pare with  those  of  their  rivals.  They  will  learn  the 
difficult  and  necessary  art  of  thinking  about  the 
trade  as  a whole  in  its  relation  to  labor  and  the 
public.  The  workers  will  for  the  first  time  get 
genuine  representation,  and  they  should  learn  by 
direct  example  the  value  of  the  solidarity  of  labor. 
They  will  receive  constant  practice  in  formulating 
their  needs,  exerting  pressure,  making  intelligent 
their  demands.  And  this,  it  should  be  remembered, 
is  in  industries  where  women  predominate,  women 
who  will  soon  be  voters.  No  more  necessary  or 


27 


THE  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  SWEATING 


more  valuable  school  of  democracy  can  be  created 
than  these  trade  legislatures,  in  which  people  have 
a chance  to  learn  how  to  govern  the  conditions  of 
their  work. 

Humble  Pie 

Yet  it  would  be  absurd  to  assume  that  minimum 
wage  legislation  is  a kind  of  omnibus  for  paradise. 
To  fix  a “living  standard”  would  be  a great  ad- 
vance over  what  we  have,  but  by  every  civilized 
criterion  it  is  a grudging  and  miserable  thing.  In 
those  moments  of  lucidity  when  we  forget  our  hesi- 
tancy before  brute  obstruction,  it  seems  like  a kind 
of  madness  that  we  should  have  to  argue  and 
scrape  in  order  that  we  may  secure  to  millions  of 
women  enough  income  to  “live.”  If  we  had  not 
witnessed  whole  nations  glowering  at  each  other 
all  winter  from  holes  in  the  mud,  it  would  be  hard 
to  believe  that  America  with  all  its  riches  could 
still  be  primitive  enough  to  grunt  and  protest 
at  a living  wage — a living  wage,  mind  you ; 
not  a wage  so  its  women  can  live  well,  not  enough 
to  make  life  a rich  and  welcome  experience,  but 
just  enough  to  secure  existence  amid  drudgery  in 
grey  boarding-houses  and  cheap  restaurants. 

We  may  fail  to  secure  that.  So  far  as  the  press 
is  concerned,  the  issue  hardly  exists.  It  lies  at 
the  moment  stifled  in  platitudes  and  half-truths 
about  “not  hurting  business.”  From  the  little  com- 
ment there  is,  we  might  think  that  a business  was 
sound  if  it  rested  on  the  degradation  of  its  labor; 
might  think  that  business  men  were  a lot  of  jumpy 


28 


THE  NEW  REPUBLIC 


neurotics  ready  to  shrivel  up  and  burst  into  tears 
at  a proposal  to  increase  their  wages  bill  a penny 
or  two  on  the  dollar;  might  think,  from  the  ex- 
clamations of  Mr.  Brown  and  his  friend  John 
Smith,  that  a campaign  against  sweating  would  do 
no  less  than  ruin  the  country. 

But  you  cannot  ruin  a country  by  conserving  its 
life.  You  can  ruin  a country  only  by  stupidity, 
waste  and  greed. 


■' ' r-.' , 


29 


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